Notification bar

A notification bar is a great way to grab a visitor's attention no matter what page of your website a browsing person happens to land on. In this article I am going to share with you 5 reasons that you should be using a notification bar on your website.

Tell your visitors about a competition or promotion you are running and provide a link to the page directly from the notification bar. This is a great way to increase the interest in your competitions and allows you to combine competition entries with newsletter sign-ups by having a small check box that says 'sign-up to the newsletter' displayed under your competition entry submission form.

Increase Your Newsletter Subscribers

Building a newsletter subscriber list is essential for any website owner. The great thing about having a bar on your website is that you can notify all visitors what your newsletter is about, the benefits to signing up as a subscriber, and point your visitors to your dedicated newsletter page so they can opt-in.

Increase Your Twitter Followers

So many individuals and businesses are flocking to the micro-blogging social network and a notification bar is a great place to alert all the people whom land on your website about your Twitter profile. After all, if you are on Twitter and have very few followers then who will see your Tweets?

Increase Your Facebook Fans

Just like our previous example, individuals and businesses are signing-up to Facebook in droves and asking people to become 'fans'. Using your bar to notify your visitors that you have a fan page and the benefits of becoming a 'fan' will help you to grow a steady following in no time at all.

Increase Your RSS Subscribers

Some people prefer to read a website's updates through an RSS feed reader, meaning that they can stay updated without actually visiting a website (if a website has their feed configured to show full feeds and not excerpts). Use your notification bar to share your RSS feed link and tell your readers to grab your feed so that they never have to worry about missing a new article or update again.

In this article I covered what a notification bar is and 5 ways you can use a one on your website. Firstly I focused on promoting a competition, then on promoting a newsletter to increase subscribers. I then went on to cover two social networks, Twitter and Facebook, and using a notification bar to increase Twitter followers and Facebook fans. Lastly I explained that a notification bar is a great way to increase your RSS subscribers.